Tag Archives: soccer

Arsenal lead way in “tough Premier League season”

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Well that was an interesting bank holiday weekend.

Even with Man City’s last minute equaliser, it is “advantage Arsenal” in what is turning out to be a tough Premier League season.

Whilst many of our detractors are going with the line that the quality in the league is “poor” this season because a team will likely win the league with low-to-mid 80 points, the truth is actually the opposite.

When teams win the league with 95+ points and relegated sides are not even reaching 30 points, then that is a poor league. It shows that the gap between the best and the worst is huge. And often it is not a case of the top teams being brilliant, but more of the bottom being poor.

In the last two years, the teams finishing 18th have got 25 and 26 points respectively. You have to go back to Newcastle United in 2015/16 for the last time a side got relegated with more than 35 points. This season the 18th place team, West Ham, already have 36 with 3 games still to go.

This season we will likely see a side relegated with 40+ points. It will be the first time a side has gone down with 40+ since, ironically, West Ham in 2002-03.

The strength in depth of English teams is also shown in Europe.

Of the 8 semi-finalists, 4 are from England. You would be surprised if 3 did not make the final (and it would have been 4 if Aston Villa and Notts Forest did not get drawn together), and it could be a clean sweep for English clubs. Last season English clubs won 2 out of 3.

Notts Forest, in a relegation battle, are favourites to win the Europa League. If they do, it will be the 2nd season in a row that a team battling to stay in the Premier League has lifted Europe’s 2nd competition. It is arguably now easier to qualify for the Champions League through playing in the Europa League than it is playing in the Premier League.

The fact is the Premier League has huge strength in depth. Every side is filled with internationals and top players and there are no real easy games – especially against that congested mid-table.

As Man City showed yesterday, you can not go away to an Everton and expect to pick up 3-points. they are a team that probably would easily finish top 6 in any other league in Europe. Both City and Arsenal have dropped many points against those mid-table teams this season.

And that does not mean City and Arsenal are not good teams. They are. Amongst the best in England. It just shows how good the likes of Sunderland, Bournemouth, Everton and Fulham are.

Whilst the likes of Bayern Munich and PSG can massively rotate throughout the season due to the vast difference in resources and quality throughout the league, top Premier League teams can not do that.

Arsenal or City could not put out a team of 50% “2nd string” against, for example, Notts Forest at home, and expect to win. But PSG and Bayern Munich can expect to do just that against Le Harve or Union Berlin. And it is not because their 2nd strings are better than the Premier League sides – infact Arsenal and City’s 2nd XI would be wipe the floor with PSG and Bayern’s – but it is because those teams lower down in the Premier League are a lot better than what German and France have.

I always laugh when I hear fans state “the league is poor” to try and bring down the achievement of Arsenal. If it is that poor, then why are the Champions, Liverpool, 4th having spent over £400m? Why are the “World Champions” Chelsea 9th? Why are “worlds richest club” Newcastle in 13th? And why are Tottenham in a relegation battle for the second season in a row?

If the league was as poor as fans of these clubs are trying to make out, then even playing average they would still be up there in the top 6. Instead, by playing 20% under par they find themselves in dissaray.

We may or may not win the league. We may or may not win tonight. But no one can tell me that the Premier League is not the toughest league in world football and that fact makes winning the Champions League even harder for English teams.

UTA.

Keenos

Where have the 1,000 missing Crystal Palace tickets gone?

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I am on 52 credits.

Over a decade of going home and away, although in recent years it has been a little less than normal.

I have never missed out on a ticket for Crystal Palace ticket before, and when the sales phases were announced by the club that they would start at 60, then drop to 55, before going to 50, I was confident I would get a ticket.

West Ham away, with 3,001 away tickets allocated, went to 30+.  For Palace we were allocated 2,687 tickets. Just 314 difference. So it was to my horror when the club announced after the 55+ sale that “only an extremely limited number of restricted view tickets available for this game.”

I spent yesterday evening looking into this, and checking out X accounts of those in the know. The only conclusion from everyone was that around 40% of away tickets had been held back by the club. Over 1,000.

Now it is usual for tickets to be held back and given to players, coaches, support staff and sponsors. It was never normally an issue, although the last few years the amount held back seems to have increased.

By 10.01 this morning, by the time the website had woken up, all remaining tickets were gone. I had been logged on since 9.30.

So around 1,000 tickets will not go to away fans like me who have followed the club loyally through some very dark days. Been to your Stoke’s, Swansea’s, Sunderland’s and Cologne’s. Thousands spent, arriving home in the early hours of a Monday morning with work a quick nap away.

Instead, we will see more tickets going to friends and family of players, and plenty held back for sponsors.

We will get a cousin of William Saliba from Paris who has never been to an Arsenal get game a ticket. Some Instagram tart who doesn’t care about football, just footballers, who a player gives tickets to because he is trying to get in her knickers. Someone who works for whichever dodgy betting or crypto company we are currently partnered with getting tickets, and probably selling them on for huge profits, and so on.

I have no issue missing out on tickets if those getting them have been to more games, have got more credits. But to lose out because the club have decided to hold back 40% to appease those who have not done their time leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

Especially when you consider over the last couple of years the club have gone on the attack against the away fans.

First they got rid of the away scheme. Then they introduced disruptive ticket collections. All under the guise of that tickets were being used by the right fans, the fans that were going week in, week out.

On the tele against Palace, the TV cameras will zoom into your kids. This will be celebrated by the club like it was against Bournemouth a few years ago. But these young kids would not have been to enough games to have the 55+ credits, so how have they got a brief? Through a sponsor? Through a player? Or just gifted by the club.

It just is not right.

And what is most annoying is I will go again next season. Do my time. My travels. And it will happen again. Non-regular fans will queue jump just because they work for a company that has a box. Distant cousins and family members will get tickets despite never having been to a game. And all the while the club will continue their attack on the normal away fan.

The final point is “where were you when we were shit”.

My biggest frustration right now is fans only complaining about tickets now that we are doing well again. They were no where to be seen in those dark days. And once those days come back again, which they will, these players families, those sponsors, the drips with their Club Level season ticket that they got 3 years ago will disappear. They will find another hobby. Meanwhile I will still be there. Hoping for us to have good times again, with the knowledge that when they arrive I will be screwed over again.

Thanks Arsenal.

Keenos

Arsenal quartet remind world of their talent

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There is an old adage in football that players can become better when they are not playing.

This was certainly the case with Gilberto Silva, when many fans only began to appreciate his insane talent when he fractured his back ruling him out for nearly a year. It was only when he did not play did many fans realise that what he contributed allowed others to flourish, and that he was not an invisible player, he was an invisible wall.

Last night the stock of Declan Rice and Bukayo Saka shot up quicker than the S&P500 following Trump saying the US will leave Iran ‘whether we have a deal or not’.

England lost 1-nil to a hardworking Japan side. They were overwhelmed in the middle of the park and struggled to create out wide. There only threat, ironically, was from corners. Many of which were poorly taken.

It baffles me how fans of opposing clubs dismiss Rice as an average player. Just because you might prefer one of your own (Man City with Rodri, Moises Caicedo with Chelsea) should not lead you to the conclusion that an opponents player is not very good. All 3 are amonmgst the best central midfielders in the world.

You then have Man U fans who continually make the Rice v Bruno Fernandes argument, ignoring the fact that they are two completely different midfielders who influence the game in complete different ways. If you were making a “best Premier League XI”, the midfield three would be Fernandes, Rodri, and then one of Caicedo or Rice depending on your preference.

Newcastle are another set of fans who dismiss Rice’s talents, trying to put both Bruno Guimaraes and Sandro Tonali above him. The irony is they have inflated the ability of Tonali so much, the Italian now wants to leave for a bigger club.

Finally West Ham fans hate Rice because he left them. When Rice was at West Ham, they labelled him the best midfielder in the world. They day he left, he was overrated. That is football tribalism in a nutshell.

Anyone that is able to put aside their tribalistic traits would recognise that Declan Rice is one of the best in the world, and is the first name in midfield on Thomas Tuchel’s teamsheet.

The Anderson v Wharton, Foden v Bellingham v Rodgers v Palmer debates will continue long into the World Cup, but there is no arguments of Declan Rice. He is simply England’s best. And last night showed how important he was to England as Anderson struggled to step up to the “senior midfielder” role and Kobbie Manioo looking like a lost little boy next to him.

Bukayo Saka is another who has been criticised heavily this season.

Yes, the headline grabbers have not been there. His goal and assist contribution has been lost. But the underling statistics are still amongst the best in the Premier League.

Only Wayne Rooney has been named England Men’s Player of the Year more times than Saka. And he is still only 24.

Saka is still England’s best all-round attacker and, like Rice, is one of the first names on Tuchel’s teamsheet. It will be Saka, Kane and then two others. And last nights game showed that.

England had 11 corners last night and failed to work the goalkeeper from any of them. Maybe now the criticism of Arsenal and our set pieces will stop? Had Rice and Saka been playing, the delivery would have been better and we might have scored a goal.

Instead, no Saka and Rice led to a dour 1-nil defeat to Japan.

Two other players to remind the world of the talent were down in England’s U21s.

Mikel Arteta has been criticised for not playing Myles Lewis-Skelly and Ethan Nwaneri this season, with the later sent to Marseille on loan to gain some first team experience. The truth is we are in a title race, which gives us little space to give youngsters the minutes they need to develop.

5 minutes here, 10 minutes there when games are comfortably won will do nothing for Lewis-Skelly or Nwaneri. And right now for them to get more minutes they will need to be playing better than Piero Hincapié and Riccardo Calafiori (for MLS), and Bukayo Saka, Noni Madueke, Martin Odegaard, Eberechi Eze and Leandro Trossard (for Nwaneri).

The guys ahead of MLS and Nwaneri in the Arsenal pecking order are top, top players, all of who have lots of senior football under their belt and are regulars for their country (Madueke aside, but he has Saka ahead of him).

Last night for England U21s, the pair put on a performance that shows they are too good for the U21 level. And yes, I get it was only Moldova.

MLS ran the game from left back. He did what he was doing last night – too strong for anyone who got near him, driving with the ball into the middle of the park, and releasing it to a teammate at the right time. His highlights can be seen below:

One man who would have taken notice of MLS was England manager Tuchel.

The left back spot is still open, and whilst Nico O’Reilly and Tino Livramento may be getting more regular football, MLS offers something neither of them can – control and forward mobility in the middle.

It will be interesting to see what Arsenal do with MLS this summer. He is too talented to sit on the bench, but will still behind Hincape and Calafiori in the pecking order.

The club may decide to let Calafiori go, if a big enough bid comes in and taking into account his injuries. Alternatively they might decide to loan out MLS to a Premier League side which pushes the problem 12 months down the road. There is also the possibility of Calafiori leaving us.

I do not overly buy into the theory that MLS’s future is in the midfield. It is a bit like Trent Alexander-Arnold where fans often spoke about him playing more centrally, but it is a different game in the middle of the park. MLS would also need a lot more development in that position, and would probably need a loan deal to play an entire season there. But would any PL side loan MLS to play central midfield, a position he has never regularly played?

A £50m bid from Manchester United would be a huge deal to turn down for your 3rd choice left back. Arsenal may also look to see what Liverpool have done with Jarell Quansah and accept a lower fee from a European side with a buy back option. Would selling MLS for £30m with a £50m buy back clause be the best option? We would basically be paying someone like Bayer Leverkusen £20m to develop him for 3-years before potentially resigning him.

Ethan Nwaneri was the beneficiary of MLS’s dominate play last night with 2 goals, and he could have grabbed himself a hat trick.

Like MLS, Nwaneri is too good for U21 football, but not currently good enough to be playing regularly for The Arsenal. It is also hard to see how he can get his way into the England senior set up taking into account the abundance of options Tuchel has on the right wing and at number 10.

The slight concern with Nwaneri is that he ends up like Harvey Elliott, where a lack of minutes hamper his progression and he never really kicks on. Elliott made his England U21 debut at just 18 and 4-years later was still playing at that level.

It is easy to forget that both Nwaneri and MLS are still only 19.

MLS was the youngest man in Lee Carsley’s England squad, whilst only 3 players were younger than Nwaneri. This highlights where they are right now – easily the best players for England at U21 level but struggling for game time at senior level.

But last night would have been a reminder to everyone just how good they are. And whilst they might not make it at Arsenal, they should have long careers for both club and country and bring in huge fees if we do decide to cash in.

I have a sneaky feeling that MLS will be in Tuchel’s final England squad. I think the German likes him and put him in the U21s to both get him some game time and see how he responds. MLS passed the test with flying colours.

Keenos